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Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on toasted bread with salt, pepper, and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Bring a frying pan of water to a boil and add salt.

  2. Crack each egg into a teacup, then slip them into the boiling water.

  3. Ensure the water covers the eggs and poach until set.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread and place it on a hot dish.

  2. Remove each egg carefully and place it on the toast.

  3. Garnish with parsley and serve immediately on hot plates.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Proteins set in the hot water, firming the white around the yolk.
Bread
Toasted slices give a crisp base that holds the poached egg.

The step that matters

Ensure the water covers the eggs and poach until set.. Eggs that are not fully covered set unevenly, leaving thin, ragged whites. Very fresh eggs hold their shape in the water, so the whites wrap the yolk instead of spreading.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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